Silent Night
by StormDragon666
Summary: Sequel to Secret No Longer. Each peaceful morning Rukia wakes and must hide from her lover, Hitsugaya Toushirou, chilling memories of a dreamworld so vivid she begins to fear that she may die there. HitsuRuki.


This idea came to me when I went to my school's graphic novel club meeting this week (actually we've named it "Otaku Gathering") and to raise money for us to all go a convention together in a few months, the fundraising idea of a movie night was brought up. One of the ideas was the second Bleach movie, Diamond Dust Rebellion, starring Hitsugaya Toushirou. One of the club members said it was available for download on Veoh, so I went there, downloaded it, and I was like, "Yay!" But no one was around to hear it, of course. I don't even screech "yay" if there are people around. I don't screech "yay" if even my dog is around.

This idea also was partially inspired/born when I read a book a few weeks ago where "life after death" was a central theme, as the characters in the book could reach the underworld if they dug deep enough into the ground. I thought that would make a great…well, horrifying, nightmare for most anybody.

Let's go.

666

October 28th, 2:24 AM

666

It was so strange, that dream of Rukia's. Usually her dreams were otherworldly with a touch of eerie, of wars fought on alien planets by talking peanut generals and their carrot soldiers, of a mother who contracted a disease that made her speak Portuguese when in her first son's presence and German in the second son's, of a dragon living in the skies who never landed, and thought he was the only creature in all the world.

It was very rare to find herself dreaming about…herself and Renji!

Even stranger, she was quite aware it was a dream. The differences—commoners she knew in Seireitei having dyed their hair, or children suddenly added to families or houses painting a window red—weren't too terribly noticeable, but she knew it was a dream anyway, and didn't care when she woke up or if she ever did, as was common with anyone dreaming pleasantly.

This was a rare occasion Hitsugaya was letting her take a walk on her own with an old friend, one of the few he trusted his precious one with. They would just walk around and talk about old school days, or perhaps to go Ichigo's hometown and see a movie with him. Hitsugaya told her to promise to be back before nightfall, to which she replied with fake weariness, "Yes, Father," and left giggling a bit.

But she and Renji did not talk about old days or go see a movie. Renji took her along a creek past an old training field, long unused because vegetation had taken over. It grew back weekly no matter how many times it was set aflame, and dubbed too difficult to mow down daily for the high standards of an Academy training field. Renji waded through waist-high weeds and bushes, dragging her by the hand, their commoner clothes—on their days off, shinigami sometimes chose not to wear their robes—being stuck and plugged with burrs and goodness knows what else.

"Renji, if you would just tell me what we're looking for I could help—" And they dropped to their knees at the same time through a little gap in the plants. Immediately Rukia felt what Renji had wished to show her. Above their heads was a comfortably low canopy of green which could only barely be broken by the cool air. The ground below them was mostly carpeted with soft moss and warmed by the earth's heat. It was of the perfect temperature and comfort, a secret and hidden place where one could…take a really nice nap.

"Isn't it awesome? I feel like a stupid kid hiding under a bunch of bushes. But it so damn nice." He flopped onto his back and bounced upward a bit with the layer of combed grass and leaves beneath him. "C'mon, Rukia, take a nap. We got hours an' hours and we'll be back in good time for Hitsugaya-taichou."

"If you were trying to help me find a place to hide from him, you've succeeded." she chuckled, laying down and using her arm as an extra pillow. "This is fantastic. I hope this place is never converted to a true training field. Ahhhh, the breeze is so fine!" She turned her face up to the low roof of green a few feet above her head and stared through the tiny gaps in the leaves. She felt the wind tugging at her hair.

Renji yawned and stretched. "There's no breeze, Rukia…" he moaned.

"Yeah, there is. Move over here, it feels cool on the skin."

With exaggerate tiredness, Renji sat up and crawled over to Rukia's patch of the moss-and-leaf carpet. He flopped down with one arm over Rukia's flat stomach and said, "Erhh…huh. That is a nice breeze."

"Yeah."

"Hey, I'm really thirsty. I'm gonna go get a drink. Be back in a bit." He met only a half-formed sigh as a reply. Rukia listened as Renji crawled up and out of the fort of greenery. She spent the next few minutes enjoying the silence, the almost inaudible sounds of birdsong and windy breezes. Soon those faded, and she was left with only one sound, a faint one: not quite a breeze but not anything else she could name. Unconsciously she tracked this sound and blinked open surprised eyes when she discovered it was the cool breeze she'd felt before, and she knew its origin now. "It's coming from the ground." She muttered to herself.

The wind, the air, swirling around her slowly, weakly, comfortably—it was pulling, not pushing. Coming from below her, not above.

A little wide-eyed and completely still, she turned around and stared at the layer of ferns and leaves she'd been laying on. There was a small black spot near her shoulder that she had been covering up, partially, and was now totally exposed. It was about the size of an outstretched hand, perhaps larger. From this small tunnel, fresh air moved.

"That's an awfully large wormhole," Rukia muttered, then thought instead that it was too big for any worm to make, and must be a mole's hole.

"_Wormhole," _her echo bounced in the hole, and back out at the two friends. _"Wormhole, wormhole…wormhole…" _

She crept closer a bit closer and put her face nearly up to the hole. She cast a quick glance around to make sure Renji was nowhere near. He didn't need to see her doing foolish things…to much. For now, she'd do this alone. Daringly, she stuck her entire hand into it and felt around. She didn't keep her hand inside the tunnel too long though, for fear of finding a nasty snake or spider or buried treasure someone wouldn't have wanted her to see. When her hand was out completely, the petite fingertips were coated lightly in black, chalky dust. She stared unsurely at her own hand for a few moments till she brushed it clean on the roof of bushes and branches above her head.

That may have been used as a communication device, Rukia realized. Someone may have been hearing her on the other end, perhaps may have heard the bumps and scraping sounds of her sticking her hand all around the innards of the hole. She laughed. "Hello, there, anybody? Is this thing still in use?"

For a few moments, Kuchiki Rukia considered shouting a quick obscenity into the hole, imitating Renji's voice, but decided against it. Odds were, if anyone were listening through this communication hole, or ever had listened through it, it was someone of high rank who would need to hear messages of the desperate sort. Best not make a fool of herself or Renji in front of such a person. She decided instead to put her hand down the dark hole once more, for no particular reason, and when her lean fingers touched the innards of the little tunnel she felt the dirt buckle underneath her fingertips. Surprised, she drew back and her thumb thumped the rim of the hole as it exited. The rim, too, caved and crumbled, and widened by several inches. By now, it was almost large enough for a small person like herself to stick their head into.

From within that hole, she heard it again: _"Isn't…awe-summ? Feel like stupiiiid kid…" _It was the echo of Renji's own words. Words he had spoken several _minutes _ago. How deep did this secret hole reach, that it could bounce back echoes from that long ago?

Miles, she guessed. At least. Beyond Seireitei, beyond Rukongai—and beyond the empty, lonely lands beyond that.

At this point, Rukia's dream ended. Unfortunately for her, it was the sort of rude awakening that stops a good dream just when it was really getting interesting, the sort of rude awakening nobody wants. Her eyes did not shoot open, but she had a very strong impulse to let them. Because, as she lay comfortably in a bed that was not hers in a house that was not hers, she felt a body that was not hers, or more specifically, a mouth that was not hers roving over her.

Part of the reason Rukia's eyes did not shoot open as she woke was that the mouth was brushing slowly over her eye almost the exact moment she woke, forcing Rukia to only open one eye and try to muffle one of her famous adorable, rabbitish mewls. Once she could open both eyes again she found none other than Hitsugaya Toushirou laying in bed with her. It was not surprising, though, it was his bed and his home and his idea (choice) that she sleep in his bed almost every day of the week, on the grounds that he couldn't stand the solitude and deprivation of it.

The real surprise, though, was that he was still asleep. Nine times out of ten, when she woke up in the middle of the night, he was awake, watching her sleep—it was a hobby—and would use his feline purring trick to put her to her dreams again. But tonight he was truly unawake, and was ravishing his love in his sleep. This may have been because, so said Hitsugaya himself, he didn't often have the time to do it during the day…do it enough during the day, actually.

Poor, innocent Rukia would have a great amount of trouble going back to sleep that night! How was she to return to her dreams with an ungodly handsome and adoring man touching her? Oh, woe, did her troubles never end? For some forty-five seconds Rukia felt his unconscious hands moving drowsily over her, searching for skin to caress. She felt his legs tangling hers and pulling her inescapably closer and…his mouth, after giving another few licks, not seeking hers. Instead he nuzzled it into the pale crook of her shoulder and stayed there, breathing as peacefully as she had ever heard. The ravishing halted and the comforting, the bonding, began.

How vulnerable he looked then, his defenseless neck and pulse exposed to her, both arms and legs wrapped desperately around her and his face buried so close to her one would have to think either he was hiding from something horrid or seeking her presence as much as possible.

Seeing as he was asleep and not awake to respond with his usual obscene romantic vigor, Rukia reached down a bit and kissed the top of his snow-white head. She put an arm around him, and goodness did it feel _right, _and returned to sleep again.

666

October 28th, 8:58 PM

666

"That was one of the most disgusting experiences of my life." Rukia growled. "A washrag won't be able to scrub this off of me. I'll need a rock. To scrape it."

"You're still young, Rukia. You'll have plenty more disgusting experiences worse than this." Ukitake Jushiro tried to soothe her.

"That Hollow had to be a rapist when he was alive. One in a gang of many."

"If it makes you feel any better, I have some of the gunk stuck in my pant legs."

"…It does and it doesn't, Ukitake-taichou, begging your pardon."

"Understandable for you feel you have it worst. You do. You're covered in it."

"If Nii-sama sees me on my way to the bath he'll think I—" Rukia's pale, twisted face finished the sentence.

So went the conversation between taichou and shinigami after what should have been a very simple evening Hollow-slaying. There had been a Hollow out on the rim of Tokyo grabbing young girls, ripping away their clothes and dropping them in any alley where two or more shady men were standing. Rukia had successfully prevented the rapes of six innocents and beat in the faces of twenty-four hormonal ingrates before returning to her taichou to aid in the real slaying.

The Hollow hadn't been truly dangerous, but every three seconds or so it spat some inappropriately thick white liquid from its mouth. It was harmless but extremely revolting and they both knew Jushiro would have vomited if he'd had any food in his stomach to shove up. When they'd finished, they were smothered in the ejaculation-like substance and both looked rather like victims of gang rape. So, to avoid being seen, they were walking in the most unpopulated part of Seireitei there was on their way to their homes and their baths.

The Kuchiki manor was the closest to Rukia sped up her walking with a quick farewell to her captain. She approached the door warily, expecting her Nii-sama or her lover or one of the servants to appear suddenly. She opened and closed the front door as quietly as possible, eyes darting around in fear. She scurried down three hallways and up a set of stairs to fetch some nightclothes—the only item left in her shelf was a flattering silver nightgown that hardly even covered her knees, a bad sign—and then back downstairs to the baths.

As there almost always was, a hot bath was prepared and conditioners and rich skin lotions stood by. Rukia cared for none of them presently despite how fine they made one smell. She stripped down quickly and dunked her clothes in a separate, smaller tub. She stepped into the bath and was grateful and relieved to see the white gunk dissolving like soap suds all around her. There were still some tougher patches, though, thick and gooey even underwater, and for these she grabbed the roughest-looking washrag and scrubbed, or rather scraped, at the unflattering stuff. When not even half of it came away, Rukia wished for a rock to scrape with, because it seemed she would actually need one now.

Eventually she took to using her own fingernails, which were thankfully trim so couldn't have any of the gunk stuck under them. This entire process took about twenty minutes, and by then Rukia decided applying conditioner to her hair and lotion to her skin could wait till tomorrow night. She got out, drained her bath and wrung out her shinigami robe. She was a little reluctant to dress in the nightgown but had no choice. She left the bathing room with a polite "good night" to the servant outside the door.

It was surprising to see Hitsugaya wasn't in her room, mocking anger for her not coming to his home instead. Rukia did feel some guilt for it, as he expected her there almost every night nowadays, but tomorrow her taichou didn't expect her till nearly noon so she could afford to drop by his office and give him and Matsumoto a hand in their ridiculously large pile of paperwork. It seemed a fair trade to her.

She meditated for a bit before going to sleep, giving Hitsugaya a chance to see her awake if he wished to come in through the window like he often did, but despite staying up an extra half hour for him he didn't come. Rukia was tired by this time and went under the covers, grateful for a bit of peace and a chance to sleep in tomorrow. She must have fallen asleep, for it seemed only a few minutes after her eyes closed she heard the window opening and the cool air of October rushed in. The girl sat up in bed and saw him closing the window behind him, looking…weak.

Hitsugaya Toushirou took his time in closing the window and crossing the room towards her. Rukia could not tell if he was trying to play at predator again or if he was merely tired. She guessed at tiredness from the way he kept his eyes on the floor. The confirmed tiredness when he set his Zanpakuto gently on her nightstand and sank onto her as though she herself were the bed.

He seemed perfectly content to lay there, crushing her a little, straining her more than a little, puffing very suggestive hot air into her ear. To ease the tension she felt but she was sure he didn't, she said, "Excuse me. You're heavy."

"Well, you're tiny."

"Well, tiny rabbits can't sleep with huge dragons laying on them, Toushirou."

He moved back a bit and looked her in the eye as best he could from his position, draped all over her. "Are you going to start calling me dr—" He paused and his nose twitched. "What's that smell? It…smells like—" With frightened and fervent passion, Rukia wished she had scrubbed herself in the bath for a longer time. She paused when she felt a rather wet object sweeping over her cheek. "You taste a bit different as well."

"I'd love to bring up your liking fetish, but what do I normally taste like?"

"Snow, of course. And I'd love to discuss that fetish too." He licked her again and Rukia swallowed a lump in her throat that may have contained one of her rabbit-noises. "But I'm actually tired tonight. There's a new shinigami in my squad, Matsumoto's made friends with him. Even when their Zanpakuto are stuck in a hollow's spine, they can't stop _jabbering. _My ears need rest." With one hand he pushed her back onto the bed and lay next to her on his side, facing her and lacing one hand in hers.

It didn't take long for Rukia to turn her head and see Hitsugaya's eyes were not closed. Those teal eyes had that same look of tenderness and longing they always did when he looked at her. "Unless you can sleep with your eyes open, you'd better close them." she sagely advised.

"I like watching you, rabbit. I thought you knew."

"Yes, but…only when I slept, I thought."

"Only then?" He sighed into her hair, but closed his eyes. "That's not nearly enough."

At this comment, Rukia couldn't help but laugh a bit. "You sound like Ichigo's sister Yuzu. She only has time to watch cooking shows on television just before going to bed. And she cries about it as though she's a drug addict being denied heroin." Rukia laughed a little more. In dark fascination when sleeping in Ichigo's closet, she'd more than once pressed her ear to the wall and listened to young Yuzu sob, torn between sufficient sleeping time and seeing the finest baked rose chicken in Japan. Hitsugaya didn't laugh at this, didn't so much as blink. "…What?" the girl asked, for if any facial expression changed in her lover, he'd gained a frown.

"That's a fine analogy." he murmured. Rukia stared back, not understanding. "Yuzu can live without her object of desire. I can't." Rukia felt a blush coming on, but was an expert at hiding such things, so used her ability now.

"You lived when I left to construct your necklace." And she eyed the necklace that he wore even now, close to a year after the incident, the necklace he would wear for several more centuries, till the day he died.

"That was not _living._" His voice was icy and Rukia blinked in surprise at the sudden change. "That was the most raw form of agony I've ever known and I hope I never experience it again." He touched their foreheads together tenderly. "And that can only happen if you never leave my sight again, rabbit."

Exasperated, Rukia said irritably, "For goodness' sake, I _won't. _Not even in my dreams! Why, last night I dreamt Renji took me out for a walk around Seireitei to talk about our academy days, and even in the dream I asked your permission before going." She pressed their foreheads together harder and Hitsugaya was pushed back a bit. "Allright?" Hitsugaya fingered the necklace she wore, a small but detailed white dragon hanging on the loop.

He said, "I can't say 'allright,' until you truly understand that I cannot live without you." His eyes were icy again and the hand of his that was around hers tightened significantly. "I don't exaggerate, Rukia. Should you die before I do, someone is going to have to stop me from following you, because I won't be able to myself. Know that." Out of habit and affection both he nuzzled her. "Hopefully it'll keep you from doing anything dangerous."

Rukia knew _accepting_ and _understanding _were two different things, but she couldn't tell if she either accepted Hitsugaya's excessive love but did not understand it, or understood it but thought it too outrageous to be really accepted. She knew that some part of her disagreed with his statement, somehow.

"You need to work on being more independent of me." She touched his cheek, and his eyes closed again, blissful and relaxed this time. Hitsugaya's free arm wound around her and pulled and pulled, till their bodies outlined each other and it wasn't exactly possibly to get any closer.

With that same relaxed tone, the captain murmured, "It's the opposite of that, actually." To humor him, and maybe for the purpose of a good night kiss as well, Rukia rolled her divine violet eyes and delivered a not-so-swift peck to his jaw.

"This," said Hitsugaya Toushirou, who felt indescribably complete with his precious mate in his arms, "is what I need."

666

October 29th, 4:40 AM

666

This night's dream wasn't as weird as a typical dream of Kuchiki Rukia's. She found herself crawling along in an underground tunnel, barely big enough for her slim form to squeeze through with all its twists and turns. She was wearing a plain lavender top and denim skirt she had more than likely borrowed from Yuzu Kurosaki. The skirt wasn't any longer than an average pair of shorts so, to make sure no pervert could look at her panties, Rukia wore some black pants underneath it. Rukia rather liked this outfit, feminine and tomboyish and simple and flattering all at once and she would have liked to take a quick look at herself in the mirror to see all of it. Seeing herself dressed plainly and comfortably would have helped her.

Because now, she was scared out of her mind.

Just because tonight's dream wasn't as typically odd as her regular ones didn't mean it wasn't frightening. Finding herself lost in an underground cave was bordering normal in all the things her sleeping subconscious had shown her. This didn't help her now. Every twenty seconds or so, while unfortunate Rukia worked around bulging rocks in her path and squeezed through impossibly small gaps, going downward and sideways and up straight vertical gaps, the earth around her shook and moaned. It moved sometimes, closing passageways and opening other ones and making dust and soil fall onto her face and hair. It was a fine possibility the earth would close around her eventually. Buried alive a thousand feet under the ground. Suffocated. Crushed to death. Ground to dust.

And yet Rukia knew she was dreaming. She knew she was dreaming and no matter how hard she pinched herself or concentrated her thoughts or closed her eyes and opened them again, she could not go back to her perfect position in Hitsugaya's arms. She was living both their nightmares, her own in that she would die, not to mention in a place she'd never be found, and his in that…she would die.

There it was again: the _NNNnnmkkkk _of a million tons of rock scraping against itself and all it colossal neighbors. Rukia felt it under her fingers, the vibrations, the voice of the planet, threatening to close around her. Her heart pounded, same as it had been pounding for the unknown amount of time she'd been down here, looking for the way out.

Suddenly her head tapped against a flat rock surface and she felt around her body, seeing that, for at least the sixteenth time, she would have to scale a tunnel that moved straight up. Yet this tunnel was different, and her heart slowed as she honed in on what exactly that was: air! She could feel a breeze now, a breeze of fresh air from the surface! The Kuchiki girl scraped her fingernails to stubs climbing up that seemingly endless shaft of darkness and she felt the wet heat of her own blood begin to seep out of some of them.

Six, seven, eight, twenty…Rukia moved. Crawled, dragged, did whatever she could. Once she nearly fainted when the rock moved around her again, a huge piece thudding and scraping into a slot inches from her foot, and she felt about herself and almost thought she was trapped in a sphere of stone—then she found the little escape tunnel, and dragged herself through it before that, too, could be blocked. A horn-like piece of stone jabbed the spongy softness of her eye and she held a hand over the pounding eye, cursing herself for stopping and needing a hand to cover the eye and ease the pain.

There was never enough room to stand, and rarely enough to place herself on her knees. Nineteen times out of twenty, Rukia crawled or pulled her body through gaps only just large enough for her to lay down flat in. Always the same bouts of horror and dread coursed through her like blood through her veins, more so when she felt herself moving downward into the earth. It was only that weak pull of fresh air that told her which tunnels to move through and when. Did it just get stronger? Yes! Yes, it did! Feeling giddy as a child with a present, the Kuchiki pulled herself faster, scraping the undersides of her arms and more than likely staining her lavender shirt black with rock and chalk dust.

She didn't much care; the breeze was clearly getting stronger. Fresh air was near! Nearer every second, now so strong it was pulling, literally pulling her, speeding her way through her current tunnel. Was that a pale light ahead? A light?! Yes! It wasn't nearly as strong as the now-violent wind, but it was anything, and anything was good enough for Rukia.

The ground fell away from beneath her and she grasped the nearest little shaft of rock she could to keep from falling into...she didn't know what. Shivering madly, Rukia looked. She stared about herself and saw a _ceiling _of pure, black rock all around her, a ceiling which she had apparently been crawling around in. It was broken only by pale, wet patches of water that glowed like stars, and the hole where she hung precariously. The wind pulled aggressively at her, pulling her down towards…she was afraid to look.

Rukia steeled herself as she would when facing any hollow that resembled the eater of her Kaien-dono, and looked down. She almost let go of her handhold-rock, her only link to that stone ceiling and that tunnel network as the breath was knocked out of her.

Below her was a stretch of endless and pure blackness. The only splash of color was a fine-looking planet—a planet!—revolving slowly below her, like an earth within the earth.

The pull of the wind—was it really wind?—became too much. The lone rock that Rukia held snapped off and she found herself spiraling wildly, being heaved down towards that planet. She didn't have the energy to scream; the force moving her was too violent to even allow air into her lungs. When at last it eased enough for her to breath she tried to right herself, look back towards her special hole in that stone ceiling. It took a long time to accomplish and when she did she saw those pale patches of water did indeed look exactly like stars, and the ceiling looked now like a night sky. But in another few moments she was that much closer to the earth, and still being brutally pushed and pulled to the surface. She'd smash to bits, if not jelly, and fear of death again enveloped Rukia, and again she tried to calm herself.

Could she use her reiatsu in any way in this place? She tried to at least exert some of it, and felt the cushiony force of it puffed away like a weak autumn leave in the aggression of the gravity. She was spinning again and saw green and orange, trees and sand, all around her. She was in the planet's atmosphere. She's hit within seconds, she'd die a mercifully quick death.

But even the certainty of death couldn't stop Kuchiki Rukia from giving a try. She reached out a hand and almost immediately a tree branch struck it and cut a red gash on the side of her palm. She cried out but stuck out her other hand, and somehow was able to grasp the branch of a soft evergreen. But that branch didn't stay in her grasp for more than a quarter-second. She was still falling alarmingly fast. She could see the ground now, a desert with a few patches of grass and a single grove of trees. She could see the grooves in that big rock that her left arm would probably hit at this angle.

Kuchiki Rukia hit the ground hard and felt the cracking of three bones. Long, slow cracks that reminded her briefly of an icicle shattering on the ground.

Almost immediately after, she heard the heavy thuds of great footsteps and looked up—it made her shoulder ache—and saw three beasts charging towards her. All of them were the size of an average pony except for the one of the right who looked both overgrown and overweight. They all appeared four-legged, they all had huge, trailing ears like lop-eared rabbits and white faces.

'_White faces? White masks, hollows?' _she thought with dread.

Had she fallen to Hueco Mundo somehow? But that couldn't be, this place was orange and green with sand and grass, there wasn't a speck of white sand or bare, dead trees anywhere. But as she came closer, she felt ever surer that they were hollows. Only hollows could have eyes so empty and also so hungry.

It was literally a bloody struggle to stand up. She mulled over a few possible Kido spells to take out these three creatures should they spread out all around her, or even if they attacked her as one line. They were fifty feet away now. Rukia's feet trembled, her shoulder was giving spasms of pain every other second and she truly felt flat as any pancake. She had fallen miles and miles from above the very atmosphere. The gods only knew how she was still alive. She was not ready to fight.

The gods may have been on Rukia's side that day. From the side, from behind one of the few trees on that flat landscape, burst a fourth creature, speeding agilely towards the first three creatures in great, lithe bounds. It was not quite pony-sized, and its leanness did nothing to make it look larger. This helped to strike Rukia quite dumb when the little creature leapt onto the largest one and knocked the clumsy beast on its side. The large beast fell and literally crushed the middle beast underneath it. Rukia saw its blood gushing and possibly some of its smashed entrails lolling. The third beast had its feet trapped and crushed under the unfortunate middle one and though it was not too injured, it appeared it wasn't able to stand up. The hugest of them, the clumsy oaf, stood up and suddenly began hungrily tearing into the entrails of the middle creature. The fourth creature came dashing in Rukia's direction.

She held up a hand, ready to cast her Kido. But the lithe animal raised its head, and the big dog-ears on its head pointed up. It raised its white head and called out, "No hurt, no hurt! I mean only to help!" And before she knew it, the creature had ran clear into her and in doing so shoved Rukia onto his back like any sack of potatoes.

How long that beast ran with her on its back she did not know. She took note of the landscape to ease her fear over everything; it remained the same all the time. The sky was black with night but the land around them not particularly dark. The land was flat and covered by warm sand and the occasional grass patch or pond or rare grove of trees. It didn't seem too bad an environment for any animal, save an arctic one.

Suddenly she rolled down the beast's tail and it lay down opposite her. "There. We far away now, they no catch us. You fine?" Rukia tried to move forward a bit to see the creature better and had to eventually settle sitting on her knees as opposed to laying flat on her back and sleeping as she longed to do. That desire to sleep left her, though. She was caught up in the creature's appearance.

For lack of better description, the creature was a pony-sized weasel. Its pelt was untidy and colored dark brown and it bore beady eyes the color of old, sour milk. Its head was completely white and hairless, even its ears. The head looked shiny in the sun-or-moon-or-whatever-it-was-light, like the surface of any hard helmet, or any hollow's mask. Most eye-catching of all was the creature's tail. It had no fur at all. It was completely bone, and sharpened and curved like a warrior's scythe.

It looked a lot like one of the hollows that had hunted her the day Hitsugaya's search party had found her nearly a year ago. It looked like the weasel-like hollow she'd called Harvester.

Since she couldn't really think of anything else to say to the creature, she said, "Why did you help me?"

The huge weasel cocked its white head. "Why? You…you different. Your head, your hair, they not white. Hair is purple. It very pretty. _You _very pretty." Rukia stared and the weasel blinked. "You no see before, those three who run at you? All had white heads, white hair, even white eyes. No other color on head. You not from here." The weasel leaned it and Rukia saw the very shade of its eyes, barely darker than the fur around them. "Where you from? I hear once or twice there was a creature like you, head not white. That creature not from here. So where you from?"

How to tell someone you're not from their world? How to tell this grammatically challenged, white faced weasel that she'd fallen through a hole in the sky and been sucked down to the earth? How to tell that weasel that she was…still dreaming all of this?

"I was…crawling in a tunnel. Underground." The weasel's ears perked and he looked genuinely interested. "And I felt a breeze pulling me, and I moved towards it, and suddenly there was no rock under me to crawl on. I was falling through the sky and I landed….there…" She pointed with a scarred and bloody hand in the vague direction they'd come from. "And…I am here."

"But why you crawling in tunnels in first place?" the weasel asked, and again it looked truly concerned.

Truthfully, unafraid of the truth, secretly hoping the weasel might know, she said, "I don't know." But Rukia then remembered her previous dream from the night before, of Renji taking her to an old and overgrown training field for a nap under some cooling greenery. She'd discovered a hole there, so huge and long it had echoed words spoken at least five minutes before. Could they possibly be connected? Could she have gone down that hole somehow and ended up in the tunnels of that ceiling in the sky?

But they were _dreams! _And this was a dream too, this weasel, those three creatures eating each other, this earth inside the earth and its sky that was made out of stone and water—it wasn't real and _she had to wake up now. _

But she didn't. She felt some sort of spite in herself that her mind and imagination were so active she had made a whole new world for herself to dream in, to live and experience in. Feeling a bit spiteful at the moment, she told this to the weasel. She told him of her previous dream of Renji's secret place and the little black hole, and how them being connected seemed the only way she could have gotten into those tunnels before. When the weasel asked what her "waking world" was, Rukia regained her tactfulness and politely told him that it was mostly pleasant and she had several people there she cared about, and a job she was quite talented at.

The weasel pried no more. Politely he asked, "What your name?"

She didn't bother with her family name. This creature didn't need to know, simple-minded or not. "My name is Rukia."

"Oh. So pretty." And his smile was so sincere, so child-like, so similar to Chappy the rabbit, she secretly thought, that Rukia couldn't help but smile a bit. So, to be polite, she asked, "And yours?"

He faltered now. "Oh…my name, I…not many creatures here remember their names, their old names, I mean. Not many creatures think we ever had old names. Most give themself a new name. I think we had old names in a time before, and I remember my old name, but I remember also that nobody ever told me it. I know, somehow. My name Harvester."

Rukia was surprised at herself for not really being surprised.

Harvester the white-headed weasel kneaded his paws together nervously. "Umm…part of reason I help you is…I was thinking, when I saw you fall to here, to this place, I thought maybe a creature with a not-white head would know…why creatures here remember old names they had, names that nobody ever told them but they remember still. I thought a not-white head creature would know some wisdom things." Rukia gaped at the creature, again at his perfect sincerity and now at what seemed perfectly in line with this place being her own dream world.

Harvester's furry lips curved awkwardly up. "Well, if you not know, that okay as well. Creatures tease Harvester often for being stupid. I not talk properly, you see. I cannot help it. Is way I am. But I have good ideas, I think. I have idea that maybe I had a past life sometime before, in past life, my name was Harvester. You understand? I can think of no other reason why I know my name."

Rukia rubbed the shoulder she just then remembered was still hurting. "It does make sense, Harvester. In my waking world, I knew a creature who looked like you. But he wore a mask on his head, and he killed other creatures and ate them."

Harvester's white eyes went wide and he gasped in horror. "That cannot be my past life! I hate to hurt others! I never do that if I have choice, no!"

The girl faltered at saying the next part, but she took a quick breath and squeezed her pained shoulder to prepare herself. "I met that killer-Harvester once. He came with a pack of other creatures and he tried to eat me. I never saw him die, but I'm almost sure my friends killed him."

The weasel creature gulped and turned his head. Rukia saw his lips trembling and eyes glazed and watery as though tears were forming. The creature, who must have somehow been a hollow before, truly did not remember being a hollow or being a living human, and had somehow wound up in this earth-like place instead of Soul Society, still in a body that resembled his hollow form. And there were other hollows, too, judging from Harvester's words, who came to this place instead of Soul Society, with their masks replaced by hairless or white-furred heads and no memory of…anything.

Assuming she hadn't dreamt all this, of course.

"Rukia," Harvester gasped, "this not dreamworld! I have been here for many months now, I know others who been here many years, many _decades. _Every last one here has white head, no other colored fur or scales or skin. This planet have history, too, of many creatures, all shapes and sizes but all with white heads. This is not dreamworld, believe me!"

Rukia came very close to believing him. "If this is not a dreamworld, then how did I get here, Harvester?" she smiled grimly, now dusting the front of her lavender top. "I'm much too young to die of old age, I am perfectly healthy and not wounded in any way. Explain to me how I got here, how I got to…"

"Whole planet's name is Dystopia." Harvester supplied, and Rukia had to put a hand over her mouth to stop from laughing at that. "And I think you come here in dreams because you special, some way. You have any special power? I know there are a few on all of Dystopia who can make colorful blasts, blow many things up, whenever they wish."

'_Cero. Arrancar.' _Rukia thought and gave the subject no more thought.

Did she have any "special power?" Not truly without her Zanpakuto. Being a skillful actor and liar, a very fast runner and user of shunpo and talented at Kido were not "special powers."

"You know, I think you come here because something happen to you before where you _almost _die. Maybe if you did die then, you would have come here."

"That doesn't explain why I'm here now…"

"Well, well…anything strange happen to you recently? Something very dangerous maybe?"

Rukia thought of the revolting gunk the hollow had spat at her and her captain. Could that have done anything to her? Did that mean that Ukitake-taichou was here as well?! Her eyes snapped up to the horizon, as though expecting her captain to appear suddenly, waving his hand. "Something quite disgusting happened to me last night. But it wasn't dangerous at all. Really not any more dangerous than any other day of my life."

"Well, it not matter. Maybe we find out, maybe we not. But what we do now is easy." For the first time she noticed a fierce conviction in the large weasel's voice. "Maybe this world is dreamworld of yours, maybe not. But you must want for to get back to pleasant home with the people you care about yes? You want to go back there? Yes. Well, you cannot fly back up into the sky the way you came, can you?" Rukia thought that not even the strongest shunpo could shoot her back up there, and if she did, that brutal force, that gravity or wind, would pull on her till she fell again. What hope did she have of finding that one hole she'd dropped through, in an entire sky?

"I thought not. Well, you need way to get home, and I want answer." Harvester's white eyes darkened to grey in seriousness. "Not many others believe me, but I know. I know had life before Dystopia. I think others know, but deny it. I want to go back to that life—"

"You can." Rukia whispered, interrupting him. Her violet eyes glowed as her theory built and built upon itself, and became complete. "Yes! If you came back with me, you'd become another soul within Soul Society! My world! Even killer creatures like the old Harvester are purified and sent there to live a new life. Again," she looked away, almost embarrassed, "assuming I'm not dreaming this. When I wake up, I'll be able to understand more."

"Yes, then you go to sleep again next night and talk to me here, and then I understand, too." Harvester nodded, showing pale yellow teeth in a fanged smile. "Or maybe it work out some other way. We see, yes? We go together to find way back to Rukia's world?"

"We'll do that if we have any idea how to—"

"I do, I do have idea!" Harvester stood up, and the scythe of bone that was his tail waved around, the threat greatly contrasting Harvester's bright bliss. "Dystopia is one large continent, and many little islands around. In few days, we make it to east coast. On one of eastern islands, I know, everyone know, there is rock with many carvings on it, and little hole where small creatures can fit." His eyes widened and he leaned down to Rukia's level. "I not be only one who wonder where old names come from. Others are like me, most think ones like me are stupid. Crazy. Think there no such thing as creatures with _not _white heads, no such thing as place where we got our old names. Those creatures are _sane," _Harvester rolled his eyes and perked his weasel ears. "Crazy ones like me go to this island with rock."

Rukia stood up. "Then that island is where we must go, Harvester. But…" She spread her arms and showed him the dirt and sand on her shirt and the blood spot near her shoulder, and the rip in her denim skirt. "I'm afraid I can't walk very quickly." With no words but a smile, Harvester grasped her shirt in his mouth and dropped her onto his back, and eastward he ran.

This is the part of the dream that surprised Rukia the most. She made friends with—a creature that apparently, possibly, maybe used to be—a hollow.

666

Sequel to Secret No Longer, LAUNCH. This one actually has a plot, though, but I promise to keep up on the HitsuRuki romance for you. It's not like Hitsugaya can bear to leave Rukia alone in this screwy universe.

I think Rukia's reaction to Dystopia and Harvester are mixed and conflicting, but hey, what would you do in such a situation, realizing there's life, life after death and then this place in between? Also I'm hoping seeing this posted will get some other authors back into this fandom, including a CERTAIN TWO AUTHORS who know who they are, and both of whom were thinking of doing new HitsuRuki's. I may implore some more later, or just add another comment to this end-note, but I really gotta to to bed. God bless, good night, happy hunting and all such things. You know.

Ta…Storm


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